


Learn From Your Future

by icewhisper



Series: Leonard Snart Shorts [6]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 00:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11280072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: The Pilgrim didn’t go after Mick in 1990. She went after him in 1992 when she could kill two birds with one stone. Len is pretty sure he’d be in nerd heaven if he wasn’t about to lose it.





	Learn From Your Future

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of my writing blog, [leonardsnartwrites](https://leonardsnartwrites.tumblr.com/). Normally, it would have been posted under the collections fic, [Leonard Snart Shorts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10837056).
> 
> Lacommunarde asked: Coldwave, Instead of picking up baby Len and teenage Mick, they pick up a 20 year old Mick and 19 year old Len.

The job went bad. It shouldn’t have. Len had calculated the timing down to the last second and the crew was limited to him and Mick, because he didn’t trust anyone to not screw it up. It had been going as expected, alarms silent and an entire warehouse-turned-jewelry-store for the taking. One second, he’d been picking the lock on a jewelry case—it wasn’t even wired—and, then, everything went to hell. Something triggered and the once-silent alarms started blaring. His own panicked eyes met Mick’s.

“Len-”

“Out,” he said and blindly grabbed something out of the display case, because he wasn’t leaving with nothing. “Move!”

They ran, boots pounding against the floor as Len strained to hear over the blare of the alarms. He couldn’t hear sirens yet, but that didn’t mean they were far off. They had to get out. Later, he told himself, he’d go over everything and see what went wrong. A new security system, maybe, but he had been sure that wasn’t scheduled until next week. It wasn’t-

There was a woman at the end of the hallway when they rounded the corner. Attractive, Len thought, in the kind of way most women were attractive when you put them in leather and a futuristic sort of outfit that looked like something out of one of the movies he loved and Mick hated. Attractive, but deadly—he did not have a good feeling about the gun in her hand—and they needed to get the hell out of there.

He grabbed Mick by the sleeve to try and pull him back around the corner. There was another way out; risky, because they’d have to make it clear to the other side of the warehouse and back through the main section of the store where he hadn’t disabled the cameras, but they could-

She shot and it came out like a light instead of a bullet. Any other situation, he would have been excitedly losing his shit over a weapon like that while Mick rolled his eyes. Not then. Right then, he was pretty sure he was going to throw up. Out. He had to get them out.

Then, people were there, bursting in with a flame gun that made Mick gawk and a woman in white leather that might have been considered hot if Len didn’t think he was an inch away from a panic attack. They forced the other woman back as a guy in a robotic suit—seriously, the geek in Len would lose his shit when everything calmed the fuck down—and held his hand out to them.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

He was quoting Terminator and the grin showing underneath his mask said he damn well knew it.

“Are we getting rescued by nerds?” Mick asked, breath heavy and too panicked to properly ask what the fuck was happening. Len was relieved he didn’t. He didn’t think he would have had an answer.

“Go with it,” he told him and pushed him after the man in the suit.

They got out and led onto an honest to God fucking _spaceship_.

Len might actually die there and it wouldn’t be because of the crazy woman with the gun. It would be because his nerd dreams came true and nothing was going to surpass this.

“It’s a time ship, actually,” the guy told him as he took off his helmet.

“Who the hell are you people?” Mick asked. “That guy with the flamethrower-”

“He’s… Well… I mean… Friends. We’re friends.”

“Of _who_?” Len asked, because Mick was the only friend he had and he didn’t think Mick had anybody but him and Lisa anymore. He’d only been out of the hospital a few months, free from the court-ordered stay in a psychiatric ward for over a year as he dealt with the fire and his family. Things they didn’t talk about. Mick got out with pills, a shrink, and a sort of clear bill of mental health and they’d gotten right to work at finding a new normal. An apartment Len paid for with the money from ATMs he’d been hacking for months. A job—their first _real_ job together, because petty theft didn’t count—as they found their footing again.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

“Just friends,” the man answered and scurried away as the blonde in white leather shot him a look. The guy next to her—the one with the gun Mick was eyeing hungrily—moved around them, but he gave Len a look that made his heart hammer in his chest. There was something familiar about him. The crease of his eyebrows. The shape of his mouth. The way his fingers twitched. His eyes-

Oh.

Mick’s eyes.

 _Time_ ship.

“Mick…”

“What?” the one beside him—the younger one—asked with a frown. “You okay?”

The blonde looked at the older Mick, wide-eyed, and he grunted. “He’s smart,” he told her. “Told you he’d figure it out.”

“He’s been on the ship two minutes,” she argued and sighed when all she got in response was a grin.

“Len?” his Mick prodded. “What’s going on?”

“Meet yourself,” he replied, gesturing towards the burlier one.

“…What?”

 

 

A younger version of the blonde—Sara, he reminded himself—joined them after, terrified and innocent in ways Len had never been. Mick put his eyes on her in a second and Len left them alone to wander the ship rather than watch through jealousy-tinted vision. It was dumb. He and Mick weren’t anything more than stolen kisses and one instance of drunken sex when Len turned eighteen and they pretended legal meant twenty-one. They didn’t talk about that night or the awkwardness the next morning.

He found himself—literally found himself—on what he thought might have been the bridge and stepped up beside him. “We become time travelers?” he asked. “What happened to being thieves?”

“We are thieves,” the older him corrected. “Lots of things to steal across time.”

“No point in stealing things before they have the chance to become famous. There’s no value in that,” he pointed out. “Besides, I’m you. You heard time travel and couldn’t say no, could you?”

The guy chuckled, head tilted back, but he didn’t actually admit Len was right.

“What happens now?”

“We keep all of you alive so we don’t disappear.”

“Lisa-”

“She’s safe.”

“Our dad?”

Snart looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “Would you care?” he asked, but he didn’t judge him when Len looked down guiltily, because he would. He hated the man, but he was still his father. No matter what fear he instilled in Len, he couldn’t bring himself to wish death on him. There was a reason he never let Mick light him up.

“What happened with the job? The security system…”

“They got an earlier appointment to change everything over. We couldn’t see the wires on the display cases.”

“So when I picked it…” He nodded as his older self did and dug the silver ring out of his pocket. “This was all I got out of it,” he admitted with a disappointed shake of his head. “Nice reminder that even the best laid plans-”

“-can go sideways?” Snart finished with a wry little grin.

Len hummed in agreement. “We stick together, then?”

“Off and on,” he confirmed, but Len stiffened. Sometimes wasn’t always and life when Mick wasn’t around… They weren’t good times for him. The year Mick was in the hospital had been… He and Mick didn’t talk about it, but Mick had seen the weight Len had lost and connected the dots on his own. Mick cooked more often now, sliding snacks over and pretending he was being subtle when he wasn’t.

Snart gave him a knowing look, but Len saw the shadow of bruises on his jaw and under his eyes and knew like a punch to the gut that there had been an off period not too long ago. “You always go back,” he told him like it would make Len feel better that he left in the first place.

The thought stayed with him as he retreated back to the cargo bay and watched Mick flirt with Sara. She shrugged him off, casting half-interested eyes towards Len instead, but he didn’t meet her gaze.

Mick dropped down next to him after a while and nudged him with an elbow. “You good?”

Len nodded.

They both knew it was a lie.

 

 

The time travelers—that still sounded as weird as it sounded kind of awesome—came back with babies in their arms. Jax pressed a dark-skinned newborn into Mick’s arms while Snart put a second baby in his own.

“I don’t do babies,” Mick argued and they both knew it was a lie, same as their older selves did. He’d been good with kids, but after the fire… Len shook his head before the thought could go any farther.

“You do now,” the older Sara said. “Don’t drop him.”

“Seriously,” Jax said. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” He looked at Len. “Him too. He’s literally my other half.” The older man, then.

Len nodded rather than remind them he had a sister. “Are we kidnapping anybody else or are we cutting it off at five?” Both Saras rolled their eyes.

“You were always like this?” the older one asked Snart, but there was a teasing smile on her face.

“I’ve always been trouble,” Snart drawled and the two Micks snorted in unison. “You should have seen me as a baby.”

 

 

“Don’t steal anything from here,” Snart told him as the rest of his team was preparing to leave the Refuge and go stop the woman that had tried to kill them. It was a nice place; fancy and with bobbles that he’d been eyeing since he walked in and the older woman realized he was going to be a problem. “You don’t want the Time Masters on your ass.”

“Sounds like they already are.”

“They’re more trouble than they’re worth,” Snart muttered and glanced over his shoulder. He looked conflicted when his eyes turned back to Len. “Stay away from Shreveport in 2012.”

Len’s back straightened as his brows furrowed. “Why?”

“It lights up too fast,” he said and Len thought he might throw up. Fire. Mick. He thought about the older version and the burn scars he’d seen poking out from under his sleeves. They’d been bad, the kind of burns Len had nightmares about, because he knew the kind of pain they came with. The limitations.

He nodded, words trapped under the lump that had grown in his throat.

They left after that, like an army going off to war, and Mick—his Mick, unburned and _safe_ —stepped up beside him. “The guy with the gun’s you, huh?” he asked and gave Len a grin that made his stomach flip. “You get hotter.”

Len let out a laugh that sounded a little watery and took Mick’s hand in his.

Mick’s brows dipped down in concern. “What’s wrong?” he asked as he pulled him away from the others. “Lenny-”

Len shook his head and tugged Mick in a little closer.

They didn’t talk.

 

 

The team came back while Len was reading out in the back yard. Nose deep in a book, but he kept peeking up to watch the way Mick warmed up to the smaller kids. He’d gotten pretty attached to the babies, especially Jax, and it wasn’t magic, but it looked like he was starting to heal.

“He loves you, you know,” a gravelly voice said behind him and he looked over to see the older Mick there. His eyes were red-rimmed, hands shaking in ways that had nothing to do with fire and looked every bit like he did after his family died.

Len knew.

He looked at him and he _knew_.

“I died,” he murmured and watched something in Mick break. Green eyes closed. His breath shook. He nodded and Len felt his heart drop into his stomach. “How?”

“Don’t ask me that,” he said, but it sounded like a plea. He died for Mick, then. It was how he’d always hoped he’d go, protecting him or Lisa. Leave the world and know he’d done one good thing.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, because he was. Knowing when he was going to die terrified him, but seeing the grief in Mick… It broke his heart.

Mick sniffed and nodded, red eyes staring out at his younger self. “He loves you,” he said again. “He’s too damn scared to make a move.”

“He doesn’t-”

“He does,” Mick said and turned hurting eyes to him. “Make it for him.”

Len looked out towards his Mick, thinking of fire and burns and people that don’t come home from missions. _Off and on_ echoed in his head and he bit his lip.

He didn’t want to waste time when he knew it was running out.

“Okay.”

 

 

They woke up in a motel in Central—their usual one with the thread-bare sheets and the showers with the horrible water pressure—with Mick’s arms wrapped around him and…

Nothing.

Len didn’t remember how they got there, but panic seemed to grab him and he tore himself away from Mick and out of the bed. He tripped over the sheet, knee crashing into the floor at the same time Mick startled awake and… He didn’t run, but he made it over to the wall—crashed into it, really—before the world tunneled out.

He was pressed to Mick’s chest when he came down from it, head pounding and hands shaking. Mick was mumbling in his ear, promises that he was okay and that he was safe, and he turned his face into Mick’s neck.

“Lenny, what’s wrong? What’s going on?” Mick asked, hands on either side of Len’s head as he pulled him back to look at him. “What happened with the job? I don’t remember…”

“I don’t know. I…” His breath hitched again and watery eyes met Mick’s.

Mick swiped a thumb under Len’s eye. “Lenny-”

He kissed him, desperate and pleading and let it say the words he couldn’t voice— _don’t leave me_ and _I love you_ —and Mick kissed him back like he understood. He tasted _I won’t_ and _I love you too_ on Mick’s tongue like he’d actually spoken the words.

They didn’t move from the floor for a long time.

 

 

“Guys in Saints & Sinners are talking about a job,” Mick told him in bed years later, one hand trailing up and down Len’s arm lazily. “This warehouse in Shreveport-”

“No.”

Mick huffed, fond. “What is with you and Shreveport?” he asked, same as he always did. “That place is _begging_ for us to pull a job there.”

“I don’t have a good feeling about it, Mick,” he said and lifted his head. “Stay away from there.”

“Len-”

“Mick. Don’t go there.”

Mick stared at him for a long minute and sighed. “Yeah, alright,” he conceded. “Someday, you’ll have to tell me what’s going on with that.”

Len would have told him if he knew why the idea of Shreveport terrified him.

 

 

He grabbed a pocket teleporter prototype when they were in 2046 and forgot about it for a while. It sat on his shelf until the Pilgrim started hunting them and their younger selves were left at the Refuge. He grabbed it on impulse when they went after Savage and let it bounce around in his jacket pocket as it all went to shit.

One arm buried in the Oculus, he dropped his hand to brush against the empty holster of his cold gun. His wrist bumped against the bulge in his pocket instead.

He hit the big button on the top at the last second and hoped for the best.

 

 

It took a year and dinosaurs walking through LA for Mick to find him.

“Hi,” he breathed, a cautious smile on his lips as Mick stepped forward, looking every bit like he’d seen a ghost. “You get the ring I left you?”

“You…” Mick’s voice cracked. “You fucking bastard.”

He pulled Len against his chest with a heavy arm as his entire body trembled. Len clutched at him just as tightly. “I think it’s time we go home.”

Mick nodded and dropped his forehead against Len’s. “Yeah,” he choked out. “Home.”

The End


End file.
